US laws tightened to improve drug safety

Drug companies will in future find it harder to bury the results of trials that show their products in a poor light. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Amendments Act, passed by Congress last week, will require clinical trials to be registered and their results placed in a public database.

The new law contains a raft of measures to improve drug safety, including better monitoring for adverse effects after drugs hit the market. The trials registry is vital, says Merrill Goozner of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington DC, because problems such as the heart attack risk posed by the diabetes drug Avandia may only come to light when independent researchers reanalyse the results of multiple clinical trials (see "GSK discussions over Avandia critic reached highest levels").

The FDA will also have to give the reasons for its decisions on new drug applications, noting ...

To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.

To continue reading this article, log in or subscribe to New Scientist